L-Glutamine- One Of The 13 Essential Ingredients In Brain Fuel Plus… Perhaps the best fitting ingredient in our product’s name, L-Glutamine is the only compound besides blood sugar that can both cross the blood brain barrier AND be used by the brain for energy, which is why it is commonly called “brain fuel.” In fact L-Glutamine is involved in more metabolic processes than any other amino acid in the entire body. It is shown to promote mental alertness, improve mood and memory, and help with depression and irritability. It has even been shown to improve IQ.

Gamma-aminobutyric acid, also known as GABA, naturally produced in the brain from glutamate, is a neurotransmitter that helps in the communication between the nervous system and brain. The main function of this Nootropic is to reduce the unnecessary activity of the nerve cells and helps calm the brain. . Thus it helps improve various conditions, like stress, anxiety and depression by decreasing the beta brain waves and increasing the alpha brain waves. As a result, cognitive abilities like memory power, attention, and alertness also improve. GABA helps drug addicts recover from addiction by normalizing the brain’s GABA receptors which reduce anxiety and craving levels in the absence of addictive substances.
-Water [is also important]. Over 80% of the brain’s content is water. Every chemical reaction that takes place in the brain needs water, especially energy production. The brain is so sensitive to dehydration that even a minimal loss of water can cause symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, dizziness, confusion and, more importantly, brain shrinkage. The longevity and well-being of your brain are critically dependent upon consuming hard water. This refers to plain water that is high in minerals and natural electrolytes. Most people don’t realize that the water they’re drinking is not actually “water”.
As far as anxiety goes, psychiatrist Emily Deans has an overview of why the Kiecolt-Glaser et al 2011 study is nice; she also discusses why fish oil seems like a good idea from an evolutionary perspective. There was also a weaker earlier 2005 study also using healthy young people, which showed reduced anger/anxiety/depression plus slightly faster reactions. The anti-stress/anxiolytic may be related to the possible cardiovascular benefits (Carter et al 2013).
At SelfHacked, it’s our goal to offer our readers all the tools possible to get optimally healthy. When I was struggling with chronic health issues I felt stuck because I didn’t have any tools to help me get better. I had to spend literally thousands of hours trying to read through studies on pubmed to figure out how the body worked and how to fix it.
One claim was partially verified in passing by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Supplementing potassium (citrate) hasn’t helped me much, but works dramatically for Anna, Kevin, and Vassar…About the same as drinking a cup of coffee - i.e., it works as a perker-upper, somehow. I’m not sure, since it doesn’t do anything for me except possibly mitigate foot cramps.)
For the moment, people looking for that particular quick fix have a limited choice of meds. But given the amount of money and research hours being spent on developing drugs to treat cognitive decline, Provigil and Adderall are likely to be joined by a bigger pharmacopoeia. Among the drugs in the pipeline are ampakines, which target a type of glutamate receptor in the brain; it is hoped that they may stem the memory loss associated with diseases like Alzheimer's. But ampakines may also give healthy people a palpable cognitive boost. A 2007 study of 16 healthy elderly volunteers found that 500mg of one particular ampakine "unequivocally" improved short-term memory, though it appeared to detract from episodic memory - the recall of past events. Another class of drugs, cholinesterase inhibitors, which are already being used with some success to treat Alzheimer's patients, have also shown promise as neuroenhancers. In one study the drug donepezil strengthened the performance of pilots on flight simulators; in another, of 30 healthy young male volunteers, it improved verbal and visual episodic memory. Several pharmaceutical companies are working on drugs that target nicotine receptors in the brain in the hope that they can replicate the cognitive uptick that smokers get from cigarettes.
The use of cognition-enhancing drugs by healthy individuals in the absence of a medical indication spans numerous controversial issues, including the ethics and fairness of their use, concerns over adverse effects, and the diversion of prescription drugs for nonmedical uses, among others.[1][2] Nonetheless, the international sales of cognition-enhancing supplements exceeded US$1 billion in 2015 when global demand for these compounds grew.[3]